


Throw-In

by rageprufrock



Series: Drastically Redefining Protocol [3]
Category: Merlin - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-02
Updated: 2009-03-02
Packaged: 2017-10-02 06:08:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rageprufrock/pseuds/rageprufrock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The throw-in begins play at the start of the game, after each goal, and after the ball goes out of bounds."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Throw-In

  
As soon as Arthur had said, "Washburn and a few of my mates are having a match today, come if you like," Merlin knew he was fucked.

Oh, he'd pasted a smile on his face and said, "Sure," like he meant it and allowed Arthur's valet to sigh disparagingly at his first four changes of clothing, but in his head, he knew it could end in nothing but tragedy.  

(Also, one of the greater disappointments of having married his very own prince charming was discovering that having a manservant was nothing at all like the morally-dubious fantasies he'd had about the whole thing.  Mostly, Arthur and Allistair seemed to exist in a state of suspended mutual tolerance.)  

Merlin had sulked through the rest of breakfast and then as he'd changed into a dove-gray summer suit and pouted abominably when Arthur had attacked him with a tube of SPF 100 sunscreen and presented him with a safari hat.

"You know, you don't _have_ to come," Arthur said, frowning at him, his fringe in his eyes.

"Of course I want to," Merlin said, and he did.  Sort of.  

They were, technically, still newlyweds, but that hadn't been an excuse from all of the many and sundry duties that Arthur's lineage had obliged; in the nine months since they'd married Arthur had traveled to a half-dozen countries, dashed back and forth throughout the U.K. and played host to no fewer than ten visiting dignitaries.  Merlin, who was compelled to participate in a not-insignificant percentage of these events, was exhausted; he couldn't imagine how Arthur felt now that Uther kept mostly close to home, worrying himself over matters of protocol — hah— and state, winding down his kingship.  If Arthur wanted to play polo with his mates on one of their rare, unscheduled days, then Merlin wanted him to play polo, too.

"Right, because that's why you've acted like something crawled up your backside all day long," Arthur complained, dangerously close to a pout of his own  —  the first of a number of small signs he was liable to throw one of his silent, unbending broods that would take entire hours to unravel.

Merlin leaned over to brush a hasty, apologetic kiss to Arthur's neck, to murmur, "Come on now  —  I'm just a bit out of sorts, don't let it ruin our day."

He meant it.  They were driving in one of Arthur's own vehicles, their pair of guards trailing behind in a separate car, and here, more or less unobserved, Merlin could be as foolish and indulgent as he liked.

The smile on Arthur's face, when it broke free from the jagged, annoyed line of his mouth, was sweet and ungrudging, and it mirrored in his eyes, gleaming.

"Well," Arthur said, and hit the gas more aggressively, "all right then."

***

It did not, however, prevent Merlin from being fucked.

Merlin had nothing, specifically, against polo.  Or horses.  Or somewhat inbred rich people.  (He'd read his fair share of Jilly Cooper books, which had a tendency to combine all three, until he'd determined that doing so breached the levy of simply "being a pouf" and entered the territory of "painfully fabulous" and abandoned them with Gwen.)  And honestly, Arthur could — and had —talked about city infrastructure planning before and Merlin had found it interesting because it was Arthur.

And that was precisely the problem: it was _Arthur_.  And it was _polo_.

Merlin could be distracted by Arthur under the worst of circumstances: when Arthur was acting like a royal prat, when he was sick and whining, when he had been just a blurry image from a telephoto lens on the front page of The Sun. 

“They’re terribly dashing, aren’t they?” sighed Rowena, Everett’s most recent girlfriend. 

She had strawberry blond hair and a sweet, lilting-shy voice, the nicest of Everett’s girlfriends so far, Merlin thought.  She sighed, the white-pink skin of her pillowy breasts heaving as she said:

“And oh — Prince Arthur, isn’t he just lovely?” and casting a mischievous glance in Merlin’s direction, added, “You’re lucky you’ve married him, Merlin, else I’d have seduced him away from you.”

Obviously, Rowena was a cow, Merlin decided suddenly.

“Lucky indeed,” Merlin told her. 

But she was right — Arthur _was_ very handsome, dressed in a black helmet and red jersey, the number three emblazoned between his shoulderblades.  It was the second chukker already, Arthur on a fresh, bay-colored polo pony that matched the cream-white of his riding pants and the dark, rum-brown color of his knee-length riding boots.  It was warm and the sun was fierce and sweat was dampening the back of Arthur’s shirt, making the hair at the nape of his neck curl, and Merlin kept swallowing helpless, whimpering noises every time Arthur’s horse drew near — or when he did something purposefully cruel and erotic, like flex his thighs as he dismounted to drink water or something, that arse.  From a distance, Merlin saw Arthur laugh, throwing his head back in unpracticed delight, and his hands tightened round the water bottle someone had handed him when he’d been shuffled along with all the other WAGs to the tables. 

“And his _thighs_,” Rowena sighed, clearly too domesticated to sense danger.  “My God, Merlin, they’re like oaks.”

They were, Merlin thought despairingly.  They were _wonderful_, and they were tense and taut around the belly of a fucking bay pony instead of locked tight round Merlin’s face or his hips or anything _useful_.  Arthur always got lazy after a long day of riding, his legs sore, and he liked Merlin ride him, slow and languid, the sort of honey-thick sex that could go on for hours, Merlin’s hands clutching at Arthur’s knees, the muscles of his calves as he arched his back into it — rocked his hips into it.

On the field, they’d just finished the third chukker, and Arthur was leaning over the long, graceful neck of the horse he was riding, murmuring in its ear, smiling, and Merlin made an executive decision.

“Right,” he said, rising to his feet and turning to Rowena, “if you’ll excuse me,” and before she had an opportunity to answer, he headed toward the field, so that as the groomsmen led the ponies away and all the players relaxed for a moment during the midway break, Merlin grabbed Arthur by the elbow, said, “Excuse us a moment,” dragged him away.

***

Arthur right about to say, “Merlin, what on Earth?” in his most obnoxious of voices when Merlin slammed him against one of the horse trailers and dropped to his knees in the grass — sunshine sweet and green, wet against his trousers.

“Oh God,” Arthur said instead.

“You asked for it,” Merlin tried to say, but he was busy undoing Arthur’s zip with his teeth, so it might have come out muffled instead, just hot breaths against Arthur’s dick, over the camel-colored fabric and hardening dick between Arthur’s thighs. 

Long ago, Merlin had thought about this, back when the extent of his sexual prowess was a locked bedroom door and guiltily purchased discount lubricant, he’d slid three fingers into his mouth and wondered what it would be like to gag on it, to push his nose into the place where Arthur’s leg would join into his hip, to scratch his fingers through the wiry curls there.  He’d thought it would be aces — he’d had no idea.

“_Merlin_,” Arthur said, and it sounded like it had been torn out of his throat. 

He hadn’t factored in the way Arthur’s breath would rush out of him, how his chest would heave, the way the muscles in his stomach and thighs would go taut.  Arthur fisted a hand in Merlin’s hair, nails scraping, cupped the other round the back of Merlin’s neck, and it was stupid that after all the sacrifices Arthur had made and their horrible, fancy wedding and all the promises — spoken and otherwise — that had been made, it was things like that — Arthur’s fingers, rough skin warm and soft on the back of Merlin’s neck — that could make him feel maddeningly humbled, loved.

He pulled Arthur’s cock out from the slit in his boxers and favored it with one long, wet lick, root to tip, before closing his fist around the base and his mouth around the head, tongue flicking roughly just underneath the crown.  Merlin could tease — probably for ages, long after his jaw began to scream silently and Arthur did it much more vocally — but the sun was out and he could hear the upper-class chatter too close for comfort and Arthur was panting like he’d run a marathon overhead, cursing steadily now.

It’d taken a while, even with more than a decade of pent-up sexual longing, for Merlin to  unlock all the doors in his head when they’d fucked, had sex, made love.  He didn’t know when the switch had been flicked but somewhere in the middle he’d stopped worrying about doing it right or doing it with style and it had felt like falling into bed with Arthur all over again — not worrying about his best angle or if Arthur would judge him, a little, for how much he really, really tremendously enjoyed sucking his cock.

Because Merlin did, he really did, and taking a breath through his nose, he pulled off, just long enough to wet his mouth obscenely, to cover his teeth carefully, and to slide back down the length of Arthur’s dick, mouth stretching around it tight and wet, laving the thick vein on the underside, moaning into it.  Arthur smelled like sweat and their soap and leather, the saddle on his horses, and Merlin let his eyes flutter shut at Arthur’s latest litany of profanity and buried his nose in the dark blond hair at the root of Arthur’s cock, to spread his palms — possessive, in ownership — over Arthur’s hips.

The head of Arthur’s dick bumped the back of his throat, and Merlin took another breath before swallowing hard around it, which inspired Arthur to use the Lord’s name in vain in some really fascinating ways.  He was drooling around the dick in his mouth at this point, his jaw getting sore, but fuck, he loved it, and when Arthur’s finely held control gave and his hips snapped — choking — shoving his cock harder, deeper into Merlin’s mouth all Merlin could think was _yes, yes fuck yes_.

Arthur was close, Merlin could tell, and he looked up, through is lashes, to see Arthur’s face red and his eyes huge and endless and bright with something fierce and familiar.  He said, “Merlin,” and the hand in Merlin’s hair went round to cup his cheek, his thumb pressed to the corner of Merlin’s lips, the pad of it dragging over the side of his dick as Arthur fucked his mouth. 

And after everything, all of it, it was the tenderness in Arthur’s touch that was still his fucking undoing, and Merlin had to close his eyes and lean in, let himself feel the butterflies at the edges of his vision as Arthur fucked him senseless, hot, greedy jerks of his hips, balls slapping into Merlin’s chin — slick with spit, precome — and come in hot, salt-bitter spurts down the back of Merlin’s throat.

It took roughly fourteen seconds for Arthur to pull him up to his feet, stick a hand down Merlin’s trousers, and jerk him off, furious fast and rough, whispering shocking filth into the shell of Merlin’s ear until Merlin’s hips stuttered, his breath caught, and then it was just Arthur, sweet, constant, murmuring hushing noises into his ear, marking the skin behind Merlin’s ear with a kiss, their bodies slotted together underneath the sun.

***

In addition to coming back from the break late and obviously shagged, Arthur helped lead his team into a rare loss.  Merlin suffered a lot of hangdog expressions on the sidelines for it and practiced his most innocent of innocent expressions, which never worked on Arthur but seemed to work particularly poorly today.

“Thanks a fucking lot, Merlin,” Everett said to him later, as all the horses were being rubbed down and led away by the grooms. 

“I assume you’re just jealous Rowena didn’t bother to drag you off in the middle of the game,” Merlin told him sweetly, and Everett’s annoyed expression faltered.

“Fuck,” he said, annoyed, and looking at Merlin with newfound respect, said, “Christ, I suppose it’s to pattern Arfur would shackle himself to an absolute slut.”

Merlin grinned.  “I choose to take that as a compliment,” he replied, and spying Arthur by the car, said, “Right — I’m off, then.”

They were most of the way back to Clarence House — having argued about whether or not it was Merlin’s fault that Arthur’s team had lost, and then about if mandatory Gardasil vaccines for girls under twelve was a good idea, and then about if Uther wasn’t getting a bit too cozy with a widowed viscountess from Surrey — before Arthur shouted:

“No!  Merlin, there is _no way_ my father would — !  And anyway, you are absolutely the reason we lost, you bloody idiot!”

“How did we get back on this subject?” Merlin marveled.

“You — !” Arthur started, and then pausing, glanced at Merlin out of the corner of his eye, hands tight on the steering wheel and a smile creeping across his face.  “Wait, you honestly haven’t noticed yet, have you?”

“Noticed what?” Merlin demanded.  And then demanded it again, and again, all the way back into the serpentine streets in London, and then into Clarence House and down the many hallways, and it wasn’t until the third intern caught sight of him, darted a glance to Arthur, and then turned flaming red, that Merlin looked down, finally, and saw the grass stains on his knees.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Throw-In [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/241918) by [RevolutionaryJo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RevolutionaryJo/pseuds/RevolutionaryJo)




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